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SSDA Announces Institute For 2010

“Meeting the Challenge of Leadership in California Small School Districts”

The Small School Districts’ Association, in partnership with Teach the Teacher Collaborative and Central Valley Educational Leadership Institute, is pleased to announce a week-long institute (July 26 - 31, 2010) at Thacher School in Ojai, CA.

A group of small school Superintendents and Superintendent-Principals via a conference call outlined specific content areas the Institute should address.  Leading speakers on these topics are now being contacted. 

Attendees will have the opportunity to not only deal with critical educational issues, but the real issues small school Superintendents see on a day-to-day basis: relationship building, effective school research, managing the limited time of a small school Superintendent, building a budget during difficult (impossible) times, WASC in a small district, identifying and meeting the most critical daily work items, available grants, time to write grants, addressing issues unique to your district are but a few items on the agenda.

Trustees are also invited as the team prepares a program to help Trustees not only study governance issues but also identify the critical role they must fill. “There is a great opportunity for team building and district problem solving when the members of the governance team assemble in a learning environment.  We want to create that environment in Ojai,” report conference planners, Al Sandrini, SSDA Executive Director, Bob Walczak, TTTC Director and Walt Buster, Director of CVELI.

As budgets for 2009-2010 and beyond are prepared, Superintendents are strongly urged to allocate funds available through Program Improvement Funds, Stimulus Funds and other sources that require expenditures in staff development. “It is unfortunate we often forget the leaders of districts when we think about staff development,” reports Sandrini.

School leaders are encouraged to "Mark the Date" and allocate the funds that will provide for this significant staff development program.

If you have any questions or for more information, please contact Al Sandrini  at  (916) 444-9335.

Conference Committee Acts on Education – more battles to come.....

By Dennis Meyers, CASBO Assistant Executive Director, Advocacy & Policy

This afternoon the Democratic controlled two-house conference committee closed out the K-12 education items on the budget. The committee adopted many of the governor’s May Revision proposals and changed others to the chagrin of the committee’s Republican members.

Here is a summary of the more important items:

• Adopted current year revenue limit cut of $1.3 billion. The average per ADA cut is approximately $220. This revenue limit reduction includes county offices of education but we do not have an estimate on the actual per ADA hit to counties.

• Adopted 2009-10 revenue limit cut of $1.9 billion. The average per ADA cut is approximately $332. This revenue limit reduction includes county offices of education but we do not have an estimate on the actual per ADA hit. As proposed by the governor, the current year cut of $220 per ADA would grow to $332 per ADA in 2009-10.

• Adopted proportional reductions in categorical program support for basic aid districts. We do not know the percentage amount at this time.

• Adopted a $1.7 billion revenue limit deferral from 2009-10 to 2010-11. Average estimated per ADA impact of this deferral is $288.

• Adopted Home-to-School-Transportation cut equal to 20 percent rather than the governor’s proposed cut of 65 percent. The conferees adopted moving the non-Proposition 98 support from the program as proposed by the governor but backfilled all but the 20 percent with Proposition 98 funds. The conferees agreed to move transportation funding to Tier 3 flexibility status.

• Adopted allowing schools to reduce the school year to 175 days without losing longer year incentive grant money.

• Adopted giving school access to additional 2007-08 ending balances on TIIG, instructional materials, CAHSEE, adult education, ROC/P facilities, and deferred maintenance. Action by the conferees included clarifying that child nutrition ending balances are not included.

• Adopted a proposal to allow schools to completely suspend their routine restricted maintenance reserve requirement through 2012-13. This would apply to districts that are in compliance with the Williams settlement.

• Adopted for three years the ability of school districts to use proceeds from the sale of surplus property for general fund purposes.

• Adopted elimination of the requirement that students must pass CAHSEE in order to graduate in 2009-10. The test would still be given to comply with NCLB, but it would not be required to be given more than once per year.

• Adopted additional three-year suspension of the requirement to purchase newly adopted instructional materials (takes the suspension to 2012-13) and prohibits the State Board of Education from making new adoptions during that period.

• Adopted language expressing legislative intent that LEAs not be required to purchase math and English textbook adoptions in the same year or in consecutive years.

• Adopted federal ARRA allocations to conform to the governor’s application rather than holding back remaining allocations at the state level.

• Adopted a reduction in the required reserves to one-third of the current requirement in 2009-10 and requires that reserves be built back to the current requirement by 2011-12.

• Prohibits county offices of education from designating an LEA as qualified or negative based on the projected loss of federal ARRA money in 2011-12 and 2012-13. his essentially allows LEAs to count the one-time federal money as ongoing although the Obama administration and Congress have made it clear that the money is one-time.

• Adopted a payback provision of $9.3 billion in Proposition 98 maintenance factor for schools to become effective on July 1, 2011. This provision does not establish a payment schedule as did Proposition 1B on the May 19 ballot, but rather defines the circumstances at which time payments would be made.

• Adopted elimination of High Priority Schools Grant Program in the current year.

• Denied the governor’s May proposal for $1 million to county offices of education for Williams monitoring and compliance.

• Adopted language requiring LEAs to report to the Department of Education on the use of flexible categorical monies using existing SACS function codes.

• Adopted a suspension of the deferred maintenance match requirement from 2008-09 through 2012-13.

• Adopted language establishing 2008-09 as the base through 2011-12 for determining the number of K-3 CSR classes, expressing January 31, 2009 as the application cut-off date.

Where does this all go now?

We expect floor votes on the budget early next week as time is needed to get all of the committee’s actions into bill form. But do not expect that the budget will pass easily. There remain significant differences between the Democrats and Republicans and the governor. For example, the conference committee all but ignored the governor’s May 29 recognition of an additional $3 billion slide in revenue since adoption of the February budget. This action actually put off an additional $680 million hit to revenue limits proposed by the governor. Republicans do not like ignoring the gloomier revenue estimates and note that it is just putting off the inevitable.

Also, Democrats acted to reduce the governor’s proposed reserve of $4.5 billion and added another $4 billion in revenue. Both of these actions will not sit well with the governor and Republicans.

Secretary of Education

Also included in the budget adopted by the conferees was elimination of funding for the Office of the Secretary of Education.

How should you plan?

As hard as it is to write, there has been little legislative resistance to the cuts. We will have to wait and see how the debate goes concerning gloomier revenue estimates and additional revenue limit cuts. We will know more as the drama on the floors of each house unfolds when the budget comes up for a vote.

We’ll keep you posted.